It may have been amongst the 17,000 in Glasgow at the Scotland-Wales game in 1876 that there were some representatives from Sheffield, specifically from Sheffield's The Wednesday Cricket and Football Club. Or it could have been at the Sheffield-Glasgow game played at Bramall Lane three weeks earlier won by Glasgow, 0-2. Indeed, it may have been at both with the men from the English steel city team looking, on the face of it, for reinforcements, perhaps something quite different, seeing it initially in the first encounter and following it up in the second.
Wednesday as a club had been founded almost a decade earlier in 1867 but the football it played was originally under local, Sheffield Rules. They are the source in the Association Football we know today of the no-hacking, no running with the ball in-hand, the off-side rule, the corner kick, a restricted goalkeeper, throw-ins in any direction and several others. And on the field the club seems only fully to have adopted Association Football rules in 1878 having flitted between the two law sets for some half-a dozen years. Two of its players, the Clegg brothers, Charles and William, had played for England under FA Laws in 1872 and 1873 respectively. Charles, indeed, would be a future London FA president. Meantime inter-city games were played with the opposing teams using their different regulations only in 1873 did a Sheffield team enter the FA Cup, allowed to only because it agreed to adhere to the London FA laws for the duration, and the local ones would continue against local teams.
And so it might have remained except that in 1876 Sheffield FA introduced its own London FA laws-based competition, the Sheffield Challenge Cup, which is where a certain J.J. Lang comes in. James Joseph "Reddie" Lang, "Reddie" on account of his hair, must have impressed in the games against Sheffield and Wales, not least in the international with his goal. Born in 1851 he was just 25 years old but was already an established and experienced player in the Glasgow game, where importantly the FA laws were adhered to. In 1874 at inside-forward he had with his club, Clydesdale, played and lost the 1874 Scottish Cup final. Now he was turning out for his country as one of its centre-forward pairing. However, he was different to most of his team-mates in that he was very much working-class. His day-time job was in a Clydebank shipyard, where he had even lost an eye, and for him money would have talked faster than for most.
As for the Wednesday, not only on the field did it have its own way of playing but perhaps because it came from industrial Sheffield its seems to have had an approach to the game off the field that demonstrated a different ethos to that, say, of London, notably to money. It was also aware of the way the football wind had been blowing. No-one could have failed to see that after a slow start Scottish football had already proved itself to superior to its English equivalent not just in terms of results but also tactically and technically. Nor could any not have noticed that Scotland was also the place that had seen the emergence of working-class players. Lang was one but perhaps better still than he was Vale of Leven's
John Ferguson. By the time of the Wales match he already had one cap, might have had more, in the Wales match he had, in fact, opened the scoring and for all we know might have been approached by The Wednesday before Lang. However, perhaps because in 1876 Ferguson was already 28 the younger man might have been preferred. Certainly it was he who for the beginning of the 1976-77 season with combined expertise in the Scots style of play within the FA laws headed south.
However, Lang was, of course, not the first Anglo-Scottish player. Robert Smith in 1871 had already moved south to work in London. There he was soon joined by his brother, James, both turning out for South Norwood, but as amateurs. They could not have taken the field for Queen's Park had they not been. Moreover, in 1876 Peter Andrews of Glasgow Eastern also had taken the road south; to Leeds. It again is said to have been for work reasons but he was soon playing for Sheffield's other team of the time, Heeley. On what terms it is unclear but there is the possibility that he too might have remained truly amateur, or at least amateur plus expenses.
Lang would stay a season at Wednesday. He would also show himself able to work the system. In fact he would take the money not once but at least three times. In 1877 he returned to Glasgow and, apparently by the SFA still considered an amateur, joined Third Lanark, the club that had emerged from the 3rd Regiment of the Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, inspired by the 1872 Scotland-England international. It, like Queen's Park, had its roots in the Strathbungo area of Glasgow's expanding, southern suburbs; the same suburbs that had also spawned Clydesdale and several others, including Rangers. Indeed, with Third Lanark, alongside a certain
Archie Hunter, Lang would reach the 1878 Scottish Cup Final. It was the second time he was to be only a Cup runner-up. The Thirds would lose 1:0. John Ferguson's
Vale of Leven
was the opposition, at which point both Lang and now Hunter would be gone. Lang, now aged twenty-eight, returned to England, to Sheffield once more. Eighteen-year-old Hunter went further south, to Birmingham and a fifteen year career at
Aston Villa, half as a shamamateur and half from 1885 as a legitimate professional. Indeed Lang, officially employed by a cutlery concern but seems also until 1885 to have spent much of his time reading the Sheffield papers, until again in 1885 at the age of 34 moving on to Burnley, which clearly paid better, retiring and returning definitively to Glasgow once more, becoming a ground steward at Ibrox.
However, Archie Hunter was not the second professional. In 1878 even before Lang
had headed south for a second time Partick played at Darwen in Lancashire in a friendly but returned without two of its players, James Love and Fergus Suter. Also from Glasgow Suter, a full-back, was by trade a stone-mason but seems to have developed an allergy to any form of rock, claiming English stone was too hard. In 1879 he and the rest of the Darwen team became the first from the north to progress far in the FA Cup. In the quarter-final they were defeated by the eventual cup winners, Old Etonians, but only after two replays. Then Suter moved on – in 1880 to local rivals, Blackburn Rovers, remaining with them until 1888.
By then many other Scots, not least the Ross brothers
and John Goodall, had followed Suter's example, taking their particular understanding of football and how to play it with them. There was demand. Their skill were appreciated and rewarded but they were also becoming a problem. By 1885 some sixty were named by the SFA as plying their shamateur trade in the English game and it provoked a reaction, an official complaint from Upton Park, the club not the ground and not the predecessor of West Ham. That was Thames Ironworks. Surprisingly it was partially triggered from north of the border, from where Queen's Park, with latterly other clubs, had again become involved in the FA Cup.
In its inaugural year, 1872, the Hampden club had been one of the first participants in England's premier footballing trophy. It might even have won it. Having had byes right through to the semi-final, it, with all ties to be played in London, drew The Wanderers, travelled south only to draw 0:0 and could not afford to travel again. The match was declared a walk-over and Wanderers defeated the Royal Engineers in the final by a single goal. The same pattern was repeated the next year. Then, after several years of non-participation, in 1876-77 Queen's Park choose after two byes to scratch from the competition in the third round. The following year it was in the second, to Daniel Gray's Druids from Ruabon in North Wales. And so it was until 1882 with non-participation and scratched away ties against Lang's Wednesday, Accrington and Grimsby.
However, in 1883 Queen's Park with an initial two home ties stuck with it, reaching the 1884 final only to lose to Blackburn Rovers. 12,000 came to watch. On the field were fifteen Scots. Blackburn's team included four Anglos. It was captained by Hugh McIntyre, originally from Rangers. Fergus Suter was at full-back, Jimmy Douglas on the right-wing and John Inglis, one of the centre-forwards. Queen's Park lost 2:1, netting first, a disallowed goal, and then falling 2:0 behind only to pull one back by half-time but then be out-played.
In earlier rounds Blackburn had been openly accused of fielding players paid to play, as, indeed, they were. It would almost cause a schism between clubs in the English, industrial North and the others, a precursor of the rugby fall-out two decades later, leading to Union and League. It led almost to a potential break-up of the FA, and was only settled eighteen months later in 1885, when payment to play was accepted south of the border. By then Queen's Park would again reach the FA Cup final and again be defeated by Rovers, this time with only three Anglos on the field, and then resign from the English FA in protest.
The coming of professionalism to football in England opened the floodgates to yet more Scottish players moving south. By 1888 with the formation of the English Football League, instigated by yet another Anglo, William McGregor, it would be impossible to stem and lead in 1893, in spite of rear-guard action fought by Queen's Park, to professional football in Scotland too. It had taken less than two decades for the amateur fortress to crumble and the club of which McGregor as an administrator, Aston Villa F.C., is perhaps the best example of the Scots impulse to changes that took place with regard to money in the period.
Villa was formed in 1874 by members of the cricket team of the Wesleyan Chapel at Villa Cross, otherwise known as Aston Villa, on the edge of Aston, a growing suburb north of Birmingham. It soon attracted a certain George Ramsay. He was an early wanderer, an economic migrant, a Glaswegian, born in 1855, who was said both to have already arrived in Birmingham at 16 in 1871 to work as a clerk and to have played football for Rovers, a Glasgow team only founded in 1873. Both are not possible but, whatever the truth of the matter he was a enthusiastic, still amateur player, very likely to have been the Ramsay, who had played in goal for the Rovers in the 1873-74 Scottish Cup, losing to Eastern in the first round.
Still a teenager turning out for Villa in its foundation year and impressing with his ability Ramsay was soon made captain, with spectators said to come especially to see him play. He also took charge of training, introducing the “passing game” with a dramatic improvement in results. He would later described his new club's original approach to the game as 'a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball' in contrast to his Scottish style with its mix of dribbling, defined defensive tactics pioneered by Robert Gardner
and already some controlled interplay.
By 1876, playing friendlies with Ramsay aged just 21 Villa took on its first ground at Perry Barr. It had been found by another club player, “John” Lindsay, and Ramsay himself, both of whom realised that to prosper the club had to take gate-money. Nor was John, actually James, the only Lindsay by then in the Villa team. He and Ramsay played alongside James’s older brother, William, known as Billy. The brothers were in Birmingham, probably to learn more about the ironmongers’ trade. However, they too were wanderers, if temporarily, both born in Sutherland with Caithness connections, Billy, like Ramsay, in 1855, James, two years later, sons of James Lindsay, a Golspie blacksmith. Both were also amateur and, although their contributions to the formative club were vital, neither would stay long. By 1881, if not several years earlier, Billy Lindsay had left Birmingham, returning to Thurso to run the local branch of the family business and marry in Wick a girl from Latheron. James would return to Golspie itself, where on the main street there is to this day a hardware store, an ironmongers, Lindsay & Co., then owned by the family and run by James's elder brother and, although now in other hands, still bearing the family's name.
Aston Villa played their first game at the new Perry Barr ground on 11th October 1876 against Wednesbury Town. Billy Lindsay played up front, James Lindsay in defence. It is assumed George Ramsay was also playing, also as a forward. Villa won 1:0. Seven years later The Birmingham Daily Mail, would write of Aston Villa:
"Until 1876 there is little of note with which the club can be identified, but towards the end of the season of 1876/77 (ed: this should be 1875/76) they were joined by three Scotchmen, two brothers named Lindsay, who came from Golspie in Sutherlandshire, and Mr G. B. Ramsay.
The Lindsays showed the Villa how to play a good back game, and Ramsay, who had for several seasons previous been considered a very fair forward in the Glasgow Rovers, a club which when it died gave several good players to the Queen's Park, taught them dribbling."
It seems inconceivable that with three Scots in the Villa team in 1876 that fellow Scot, William McGregor, would not have noticed and been noticed. Born in Braco in Perthshire in 1846, he had served an apprenticeship as a draper in Perth itself before following his elder brother to Birmingham and in Aston opening his own drapers shop.
Never much of a player McGregor's participation in football began with officiating before being invited in 1877 to help with his local team. Once involved with Villa, he quickly became club administrator, as the following year, 1878, it recruited its fifth early Scot, Archie Hunter, of course.Hunter had begun his career with Ayr, in the town of his birth. There as a child he had played and would later describe a form of football, more like rugby, before taking up the Association game that would later provide him with income. He arrived in Birmingham, with more than a suggestion of some sort of financial arrangement to join another club, Calthorpe F.C., which had also been founded by a Scot and had also originally been William McGregor's first. Unable to find it Hunter was instead persuaded to join Villa, where he was soon joined by his brother, Andy.
Archie Hunter would later write:
“Aston Villa (seemed) to me as a club that had come rapidly to the fore and asked me to become a member of it. I hesitated for some time, but at last my friend told me that a "brother Scot," Mr. George Ramsay, was the Villa captain and that decided me. Mr. Ramsay was a Glasgow man and had exerted himself very considerably to bring the Villa team into the front rank.”
Both Archie and Andy would play alongside George Ramsay in the Villa team, no doubt now all three as shamateurs. Ramsay would retire as a player in 1882 at the age of just 27. At 29 in 1884 he was appointed club secretary, a position in which he would remain for 42 years until in his 70s. Under him the Villa would win the league six times and the FA Cup six also. They have not won either since. Andy Hunter would score the club's first ever FA Cup goal, against Stafford Road in 1879, but die young, in Australia aged just 24 in 1888 of a heart-attack. He would not see Villa take a trophy but brother Archie would become captain, a decade after joining lift the F.A. Cup for the club for the first time and live just long enough to see Villa take its first league title. In 1890 in a game against Everton he too suffered a heart-attack and collapsed. He was not to play football again, dying at the age of 35 in 1894.
By then not only had professional football been accepted in England but also in Scotland. And the man, who created the blueprint for it, was once again William McGregor, now also one of several Scots, who were had been involved with Villa not just on the field but at board level. There had been the events surrounding the 1884 Cup Final. Discussions followed, in which McGregor was said to have decried payment but admitted his club did it. He could do little else. He had watched, if not necessarily been part of the process. His own club had moved from the amateurs, James and Billy Lindsay, to the shamateurisation of George Ramsay and intentionally shamateur approach of the Hunter brothers. It had seen a growth of income from crowds coming to see matches but with the new, openly professional era it was not enough anymore to rely on income from friendlies and a fragile Cup-run. More and regular income was required and it would come only from guaranteed games and enhanced crowds.
Thus it was in 1888 that McGregor wrote a letter to a select group of Northern English clubs proposing discussions of a football combination. The clubs, all in the same position as his, almost bit his hand off. In six months, little more than a closed season, the Football League was created, the model for similar leagues world-wide. In a decade Aston Villa's income grew six-fold and football as a business, a world-wide business, was on its way.
The Scottish Football League would be formed in 1890. Initially amateur it would turn professional in 1893. Scotland had caught up in all but one regard. Whilst Scots players continued to find the road south to be paid for their contribution physically and tactically to the game, they could not play for their country. In the meantime the national team would stumble its way to defeats against England when ten years earlier losses had been unknown and victory would only return when in 1896 due to pure pragmatism that final barrier of a ban on selection of Scots playing in the English league was overturned.